Collective Bargaining - Congress of South African Trade Unions

Special bulletin

Special bulletin Professor Eddie Webster, Director of the Chris Hani institute, posed the question: Decent work for some, or decent work for all? In 2009 the ANC government won the elections with the slogan, ‘Decent work for all’, a term introduced into the global policy discourse by the ILO in 1999, but which also lies at the core of the Freedom Charter. The difficult questions are how to define, measure and implement it. He reported on a survey of 3000 workers in the private security industry, agricultural labour and the hospitality sector in Gauteng, to assess how their conditions compare with the standards in the ILO Decent Work Index, an instrument designed to measure decent work for the country as a whole and gave some quotes from the interviewees. Security is the fastest growing industry and occupation in South Africa, the first port of entry into the labour market for many who migrate from rural areas and other African countries. “Boredom is our daily bread, it is a lonely job. So boredom is something you cannot run away from. Every-day I just come and sit here. You can play music, but you get tired of it. The night is very lonely – 12 hours is a long time. You just sit there and you think” (Sipho, 07/08/11) Obstacles to unionization include noncompliance both with labour legislation and PSIRA’s regulations, an unknown number of unregistered private security companies, which employ many foreign nationals. Flyby-night companies usually pay very little and employees are subject to exploitative practices such as double shifts and irregular pay. The number of farm workers has declined from 1.1 million in 1993 to 796 806 in 2007, with a shift from permanent to casual and seasonal workers and only 3% unionization. “He tells you to leave through the same gate you came in … I have tried telling him about the working conditions, but the problem is the gate … You must just head straight for the gate. If you came in through it, leave through it; that is what he will tell you”). 25% of hospitality industry employees are non-SouthAfricans, 82% of whom are feb/mar 2013 page 8 www.cosatu.org.za Zimbabweans. It has a highly flexible labour market, employing a significant number of casual and part-time workers of whom many are students. Shift work is widespread with many workers employed at night “When you leave the baby he’s asleep and when you come home he’s asleep again”. Obstacles to unionization include a highly flexible labour market, employing a significant number of casual and parttime workers and shift work is widespread. Many workers, especially in casinos, do not see themselves as workers, and restaurants, hotels and casinos are tightly enclosed and heavily guarded spaces. He ended with a warning about the use of violence • It can alienate workers from the public and from each other • It can also lead to police violence • Logistical and symbolic power must be used strategically and peacefully • We are building a democracy based on consent not coercion.

Patrick Belser from the International Labour Organization and Neil Coleman, COSATU’s strategies coordinator presented international perspectives on the argument for a national minimum wage. The presentations drew lessons from the Brazilian experience where huge gains under President Lula (2003-10) in reducing poverty, unemployment and inequality were recorded. Under president Lula 17 million formal jobs were created (2002-11). The contribution of domestic demand to Brazilian GDP rose from -0, 5% in 2003, to 9.1% in 2010. Net external demand has been minimal or negative in terms of GDP growth Patrick’s presentation gave a detailed history of minimum wages, how demands for minimum wages developed in New Zealand and Australia at the very end of the 19th century. “While minimum wages were regarded favourably until the 1970s, the context changed after the oil shock in 1973, the debt crisis in developing countries in the 1980s and the implementation of structural adjustment policies in the 1980s and 1990s.” He said The presentation showed a diversity of national minimum wages. Some countries implement relatively straight forward national minimum wages which are economy-wide wage floors that apply to all workers, with some possible variation by regions or broad categories of workers Throughout the world, an estimated 90 percent of all countries have some kind of minimum-wage setting. The presentation also exposed a startling gap in wages between women and men. The over-representation of women in low-wage jobs seems to be a universal characteristic of labour markets, and the fact that women predominate in low-wage employment has a negative effect on the gap in average wages between men and women. feb/mar 2013 page 9 www.cosatu.org.za Special bulletin Towards a National Minimum Wage: The Brazilian experience Coleman’s presentation called for: • A coherent wage and incomes policy. • A National Minimum Wage as one cornerstone and springboard of that policy, to protect all low-paid workers. • A legislated comprehensive sectoral bargaining to improve on minimum wage floor. • A comprehensive social protection and a universal social wage, to provide workers with non-wage income • A national wage and incomes policy to be combined with an appropriate macro-economic and industrial policy- not the policy in the NDP which would entrench deregulation of the labour market, and deindustrialisation. He said that for a decent wage policy to be most effective, it must be driven by a developmental state, as part of comprehensive strategy. E.g. if raising income in Brazil, wasn’t combined with increase in domestic productive capacity, that income would not have driven the creation of large scale formal employment.